In Which We Discuss Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind blew me away.

Ha!  Pun!

I watched Gone with the Wind on Christmas Day, and picked up the book shortly after that.  I've owned it for a while - almost ten years - but had never read it.  I don't know why.  Maybe because I didn't have much idea of what it was about, and it's over a thousand pages long.

Anyway, I really liked the movie, so I decided to pick up the book.

Warning: Spoilers for Gone with the Wind Beyond Here!

Firstly, I loved Scarlett.  She's a ruthless bitch.  She's accused of being selfish, and it's true that she doesn't take much consideration of other people's feelings.  But, really, would a selfish person break themselves to support others like she does?

I also loved Rhett.  He and Scarlett deserve each other, in a good way and a bad way.

I loved how readable the book was.  It was over a thousand pages long, but the only thing that put me off about that was the idea of trawling through it.  Actually reading it was easy.

I was aiming to write a really thorough review and explanation of this book, but now I come to try to do it, I find I have no original thoughts.  Only fangirl squeals.

Oh, wait.  I do have one observation to make.

In Sheri Tepper's Grass, Marjorie observes that her husband's fiery personality is at odds with her own.  She wants to know him gently, to observe him at arm's length.  He wants to know her by possession.  He can either be up close or far away; he has no middle ground.

Rodrigo, Marjorie's husband, reminds me of Scarlett and Rhett, while Ashley is more like Marjorie.  Their unhappy marriage is something like how I imagine Scarlett and Ashley would have ended up, if Scarlett had her way.

In Which We Discuss To-Do Lists and Not Being a Lady-in-Waiting

Last year, I began using the term 'Lady-in-Waiting' to describe the state of having endless to-do/cook/read/make/experience lists which you are never ever going to get around to. Having things left undone makes me twitchy. Plus, I watched my grandmother build up a huge collection of cookbooks which she eventually threw out, having made nothing at all from most of them. It seemed like such a pointless exercise.

Deep-fried breaded mozzarella balls - on pizza!

To that end, I logged all of my unread books on GoodReads and vowed to get through them. I got it down to under two hundred, and have stepped it up by not buying any new books this year, and aiming to get it down to under one hundred by next January. Currently, it's one 171, so I'm making good progress.

Prawn toast and chicken chow mein -
the containers are for versimilitude.

Regarding cookbooks, I only own a handful. Vegan Brunch, The Happy Herbivore's Cookbook, Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, The Hindi-Bindi Club (if you want to count it), and The Takeaway Secret. All except that last one, I own as physical books, so whenever I actually make a recipe I write a comment on the page and tick it off on the contents page. That last one is a kindle book, so I've taken to doing it all with notes instead.

The idea of actually making everything from a cookbook has been something I've toyed with for the past few years. I didn't see Julie and Julia until about six months ago, so it probably wasn't inspired by that. On the other hand, it may have been - I did hear of the movie long before I saw it. For me, it's less a big personal challenge, more a way to be frugal and to experiment with new foods, since I'm a former fussy eater.

Battered fish, potato scallops, and chips.
The peas and sweet chilli sauce are mostly there so the photos aren't just beige.

I've pretty much decided that it'll be The Takeaway Secret that I complete first.  It has the easiest recipes, with the simplest ingredients, out of all the cookbooks I own.  I think a big part of that is that it's written by a British author, Kenny McGovern.  American cooking is weird.  And on that note, can I just say something?  We consider boxed cake mixes as being something you'd make with a child, not something an adult would seriously make and serve to other adults.  You can't call it a recipe if you use boxed cake mix, and it looks so weird when we look at American cookbooks that are seriously suggesting exactly that.  Also, your food is too sugary.  Take note.

Anyway, yes.  American cookbooks.  They sometimes call for ingredients that are harder to find over here, or offer a taste palate that's a little sweeter than we can handle.  I'm not accusing either the Happy Herbivore or Isa Chandra Moskowitz of any of these crimes, you understand, it's just a more general rant.

Anyway, The Takeaway Secret.  It's a whole book of fast food and takeaway recipes, and most of them taste pretty accurate.  It's been great fun making them every week, and mein liebling has enjoyed taking the photos.  It's been good practice for him, and he gets to eat them afterwards.  I think I'm about halfway through the book now, so I'll let you know how it goes.

In Which We Discuss Week 1 of 2014

Between the 1st and 7th of January this year, I read;

In Stitches - Nick Edward's memoir of his time as an A&E doctor.  I read quite a few books by NHS personnel last year.  This one was pretty good.  Split into nice short chapters, some good anecdotes, etc.  I gave it four stars.

Charmed Season 9, 3 and 4 - I bought myself both of these for Christmas.  The television series, Charmed, ended with eight seasons, but a further season was produced in comic format.  It reintroduces Prue in her afterlife, brings Cole back, and generally carries on with the series.  I liked it a bit better than the last few season; although Phoebe still suffers from fantastic racism against Cole, she's not as much of a Mary Sue when Alyssa Milano isn't in charge.  I gave both collections four stars.

Poems - Edna St Vincent Millary (Everyman Library) - I first heard of Millay a few weeks ago, during some random wikisourcing.  I loved what I read on there, so requested this for Christmas.  It's amazing.  I love so many of her poems.  She reminds me of Dorothy Parker.  I also love the fact that she preferred to be called Vincent and that she won the Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1923.  Five stars.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall - Sheri S. Tepper is one of my absolute favourite authors, and this is one of the books of hers that I like best.  Five stars.

In Which We Discuss 2013

Last year, I read a total of 324 books, 244 of which were new to me.

Annoyingly, this has not resulted in a huge decrease in my unread pile.  At the start of 2014, it had 177 books in it.  That's now crept up to 186.

My goal is to reduce that pile to a more manageable size. I'll have less time to read this year; last year, I read thirty books in a week simply because I had nothing better to do than challenge myself.  Now I have a job, which is pretty awesome, but means I can't read four books in one day any more.

I'll try to write regular updates, mostly to keep myself on track.  Maybe go back to writing those weekly updates of what I've read.  We'll see.

In Which We Discuss Night Shift

So, it took me a while (from August 2nd to August 26th, according to GoodReads) but I finished Stephen King's Night Shift.

It didn't take so long because I wasn't enjoying it.  It's more because it's short stories, which you can dip in and out of at will.  I read a few other things during this time purely because I could, without breaking the flow of a longer novel.

Anyway, Night Shift.  Published in 1978, it consists of short stories from early in King's career, the majority of which were published in various magazines in the years before Carrie came out.  In various introductions and interviews (don't ask me which ones) Stephen King has discussed the way in which the pressure to raise money for his family - a wife and a baby during the majority of those years, if I recall correctly.  I believe both he and Pratchett have talked about what a huge motivator it is to really need to earn money from writing.

...I started that post back in August.  Dear god, it's already January.  How did that happen?

Oh, I know.  It involved full time work, rather than being unemployed, and a couple of twelve hour shifts.  They were overtime and I got time and a half, my workplace isn't that cruel.

Stephen King's next book is The Stand, which I have on kindle.  I'll get to it at some point.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read Last Week VI

I started lots of books this week. I didn't finish many.

 A lot of the books I've been reading are short stories - Night Shift, Binocular Vision, and The Best Russian Short Stories, those first two by Stephen King and Edith Pearlman respectively.  Because they're short stories, I've not been reading them in one go; instead I've been dipping in and out at random.

I've also been reading Mansfield Park; I've never gotten along with Austen but I listened to a Freakonomics podcast a while back that theorised about her novels being an exploration of game theory in a social setting, which made me a little more interested.  Plus, Project Gutenberg is one site that's unblocked at work and that no one says a thing about me looking at during quiet times.  So I've been dipping into Flatland when Mansfield Park becomes a bit too much.

I also started reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for a bookclub I'll be attending on Tuesday evening.  I like it so far.  It's about HeLa cells, the first immortal strain of human cells, which is still propagating in petri dishes all over the world, and the woman they came from in the first place.

Going back to what I actually did finish reading this week.  I've read The Devil Wears Prada before.  I remember Brit-picking it, and you can read that rant here.  You can also read my longer review of the book here.

I reread The Devil Wears Prada this week because I got my hands on a copy of Revenge Wears Prada and figured I should reread the original so it was fresh in my mind.  It worked pretty well.  Both were 99p on the Kindle store.

Revenge Wears Prada is in third person, which is a bit of a jump from the first person viewpoint of Devil.  Weisberger has also dropped that religion theme-naming thing she was doing.  All of the old characters pop back up, and the work is thematically similar, in that Andy is treated unfairly until she snaps and fixes her life.  I quite enjoyed it, though it wasn't anything too special.  If you liked the original book, it's probably worth a look if you have the time and 99p to spare.  There isn't really any revenge though.

I think I gave them both 3/5 stars.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read Last Week V

It's been a busy fortnight.  I've been working full time for almost a month, I'm a year older, and I have a new boyfriend.  I call him Trix.  He makes me smile and go all pinky and giggly.

Anyway, books.

Crunchy Betty's Food on Your Face is a book I've wanted to read for a while.  Crunchy Betty, aka Leslie Martin is a beauty blogger who uses all natural beauty products, mostly of the edible variety.  The book in particular is focused on oily skin, and mine is dry, so a lot of the info wasn't applicable.  That said, some of it was, and I'm happy to support her.  On a practical level though the blog stands on its own merits.  4/5.

Big Brother is by Lionel Shriver, who also wrote We Need to Talk About Kevin.  This one focuses on a business woman whose brother has suddenly put on an extra 200 or so lbs, and how utterly horrific this is.  I was eye-rolling throughout much of it.  There are so many ignorant assumptions; that big people must be binging like pigs, that no one would ever find them attractive, that it was such a huge trial to have one of them in your home, being related to you, etc etc.  I agree that a huge change in a family member's appearance would be a cause for concern if they also showed signs of depression, but, really?  How petty.  I quite enjoyed the middle section, when the heroine decides to help her brother lose weight, but that was quickly undone by the ending.  3/5.

Richard Bacon, as some of you may remember, was the Blue Peter presenter who was fired for snorting cocaine.  I was nine or ten at the time, and I remember having a bit of a crush on him, so I thought it would be fun to see it from the other side.

I loved A Series of Unrelated Events.  Bacon is deeply, deeply sarcastic, and the book is hilarious.  It's like the way I imagine my little rants sound in my head.  It really is written more as a series of broadly unrelated events, rather than a narrative, and it really works.  4/5.

Dana Bane's The Secret Supper Club was about a woman who has always wanted to be a chef, but has been discouraged by her parents, partner, etc etc.  Having lost said partner, she is convinced to cheer herself up by hosting one of those pop-up restaurants.  In many ways it reminded me of Sophie Kinsella's The Undomestic Goddess, particularly the parts about a career woman finding peace in the joy of cooking.  Lots of loving talk of food and fluffy drama.  4/5.

The World According to Humphrey  is a children's book I found on Kind of Book which was reduced to free on the Kindle store.  It's a children's book from the point of view of a classroom hamster.  I quite liked it; 3/5 stars.

How Many Socks Make a Pair? was a lovely little book about recreational mathematics.  The author writes that he wanted to demonstrate the ah?  Aha, and haha! of mathematics.  I think he succeeded.  It's fairly short, but it was interesting, and I went on about it all afternoon.  My coworkers enjoyed it.  They didn't say otherwise, anyway.  4/5 stars, and here's a little logic puzzle for you.  A woman is 21 years older than her son.  In six years, she will be five times his age.  Where is the father?

Finally, The Basic Eight.  This is a book I've read before, and is, in fact, one of my favourites.  I bought myself a digital copy and gave the paperback to Trix.  I hope he likes it.

The Basic Eight is written as if it is a true crime novel inside a fictitious universe.  That is, Flannery writes as if the audience is fully aware of the murder she's commited, which leads to an interesting little bit about a photograph.  You'll understand if you read it.

Daniel Handler also writes as Lemony Snicket, and his dark humour comes across here too.  The book reminds me, more than anything, of Heathers, the movie with Christian Slater and a fifteen-year-old Winona Ryder.

I'm too tired to be descriptive.  It gets 5/5 stars, obviously.  Trust me, read it, it's awesome.